Clark Haaland

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July 10th, 2025

​ A newsletter by Anne-Laure Le Cunff​

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Hello friends,

I recently had dinner with a famous author, a scientist and an artist. Despite their obvious success, the conversation turned to how often they all felt “not smart enough.”

I experience this too, especially when I’m around accomplished people. Since I know many... See more

“If someone truly is creative and inspiring,” they write, “it will show up in how they allocate their spare time.” In job interviews, the authors advise hiring managers to ask, “What are the open tabs on your browser right now?”

Collecting and archiving are ways to reclaim and own our attention—they are acts of meaning-making. These practices are rituals: habits and skills that demand time, patience, and a willingness to look beyond the surface.

To collect well is to resist algorithmic influence. A true collection reflects deeply personal values and a genuine desire to... See more

Too Much Of A Good Thing

This is known as an inverted-U curve:

In their paper, Too Much of a Good Thing, the psychologists Adam Grant and Barry Schwartz reveal the inverted-U-shaped relationship between nearly everything of consequence. Rooted in the ancient philosopher Aristotle’s famous concept of “the golden mean”—“happiness and success are a... See more

The philosopher Kierkegaard wrote 150 years ago, and he was one of the first psychological philosophers who really wrote about anxiety. He regarded himself rather useless, all things considered. He wrote a section in one of his books about all the industrialists who were operating in Europe at that time, trying in every possible way to make life... See more